Face to face

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Exo 33:11 And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp: but his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle.

Exo 33:20 And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.

The word for face in both verses is paw-neem which means the "face", the part that turns.(Strongs)

How did God speak to Moses "face to face" if a man can not look upon God?

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New Member

At the outset we have a contradiction here but actually, the contradiction exists in our understanding, not in the Bible.

In Exodus 6:2-3, God Almighty was seen; not the angel of the Lord, for an angel is not Almighty. Moses saw God, not in a vision or dream, as attested by God Himself in Numbers 12:6 -8.

Now, why can’t we accept what the Bible says. If the Old Testament people claimed they saw the Lord Almighty then they were seeing God. While in John 6:46 Jesus said that no man has seen the Father. I suggest what the OT people had seen was NOT the Father, but Someone in the Godhead. They were seeing the Word before His incarnation. Thus, they saw Jesus.

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The phrase "Face to face" in that instance obviously cannot mean what we usually think it means, since no man can see God and live. Just as we can't think that 2 Sam 1:26 means that David had romantic feelings for Jonathan. I believe it is a way of implying intimacy and familiarity. I don't think it means that Moses was physically looking on God's face. He's invisible. Moses wouldn't be able to see Him with his natural eyes.

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Thanks All,
I know there's a couple of yun's that may remember me, but like I've stated in other posts, I've been out of commission for a couple of years or more. so I'm having to re-learn some stuff.
No excuse...just the truth. I do remember it depends on the way the name of God was used, Lord God, The Lord, God, as to the idenity of which presonality(ies) the particular passage is referring to. Mabey it was something like when He appeared in the burning bush.

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Active Member

My pastor has spoken on this and he said that the Ex. passages translated as "face to face" comes from a Hebrew term meaning intimate meeting or encounter - a one-on-one relationship (or something to that effect). It does not mean Moses actually looked upon God's face. This term emphasized the close, direct relationship God had with Moses, which was a rather unusual situation in the OT.

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Active Member

He is described as the only person who ever knew G-d face-to-face (Deut. 34:10) and mouth-to-mouth (Num. 12:8), which means that G-d spoke to Moses directly, in plain language, not through visions and dreams, as G-d communicated with other prophets. http://www.jewfaq.org/moshe.htm

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